The King in Yellow

1AC
Note: Passages (not) cards have been edited for length, which have been
marked by ellipses (). The original passages can be found by following the
footnotes.

Carcosa
Alongtheshorethecloudwavesbreak,
Thetwinsunssinkbeneaththelake,
Theshadowslengthen
InCarcosa.

Strangeisthenightwhereblackstarsrise,
Andstrangemoonscirclethroughtheskies
Butstrangerstillis
LostCarcosa.

SongsthattheHyadesshallsing,
WhereflapthetattersoftheKing,
Mustdieunheardin
DimCarcosa.

Songofmysoul,myvoiceisdead;
Diethou,unsung,astearsunshed
Shalldryanddiein
LostCarcosa.

Filledwiththesereflections,Iwasforsometimeheedlessofthesequenceofmyown
experiences,butsoonIthought,HowcameIhither?Amomentsreflectionseemedtomake
thisallclearandexplainatthesametime,thoughinadisquietingway,thesingularcharacter
withwhichmyfancyhadinvestedallthatIsaworheard.Iwasill.IrememberednowthatIhad
beenprostratedbyasuddenfeverNowIhadhadwanderedhithertotowhere?Icouldnot
conjecture.ClearlyIwasataconsiderabledistancefromthecitywhereIdwelttheancientand
famouscityofCarcosa.
Amomentlateramansheadappearedtoriseoutofthegroundashortdistanceaway.
Hewasascendingthefartherslopeofalowhillwhosecrestwashardlytobedistinguishedfrom
thegenerallevelHewalkedslowlyandwithcaution,asifhefearedfallingintosomeopen
graveconcealedbythetallgrass.Thisstrangeapparitionsurprisedbutdidnotalarm,andtaking

suchacourseastointercepthimImethimalmostfacetoface,accostinghimwiththefamiliar
salutation,Godkeepyou.
Hegavenoheed,nordidhearresthispace.
Iseatedmyselfattherootofagreattree,seriouslytoconsiderwhatitwerebesttodo
AgreatrootofthegianttreeagainstwhosetrunkIleanedasIsatheldinclosedinitsgraspaslab
ofstone,apartofwhichprotrudedintoarecessformedbyanotherrootAsuddenwindpushed
somedryleavesandtwigsfromtheuppermostfaceofthestone;Isawthelowrelieflettersofan
inscriptionandbenttoreadit.GodinHeaven!mynameinfull!thedateofmybirth!thedate
ofmydeath!
AlevelshaftoflightilluminatedthewholesideofthetreeasIsprangtomyfeetin
terror.Thesunwasrisingintherosyeast.Istoodbetweenthetreeandhisbroadreddiskno
shadowdarkenedthetrunk!
Achorusofhowlingwolvessalutedthedawn.Isawthemsittingontheirhaunches,
singlyandingroups,onthesummitsofirregularmoundsandtumulifillingahalfofmydesert
prospectandextendingtothehorizon.AndthenIknewthatthesewereruinsoftheancientand
famouscityofCarcosa.1

The disavowal of death is a product of modernitydeath

is displaced, forbidden, and expelled from society
Peterson 07
(Christopher, Kindred specters: death, mourning, and American affinity, Published by the University of
Minnesota Press, pages 2-3)//AD

American culture tends not to acknowledge

the intimate relation among death, mourning, and kinshipno doubt because
in the modern West we tend to see the barrier that separates the living and the
dead as insurmountable. If we follow historian Philippe Aris on this subject, however, we see that things
were not always so. In contrast to the Middle Ages, in which a certain familiarity with
death was displayed, a promiscuous coexistence of the living and the dead, Aris argues that the rise of modernity
witnessed an effacement and interdiction of death. Death was to be put in its
proper place, whether its place be the newly constructed
cemeteries on the outside of the city walls or the hospitals where patients now came to die
The popularity of Six Feet Under notwithstanding,

rather than to get well: Mourning is thus no longer a necessary period on which society imposes respect. It has become a morbid state that
needs to be nurtured, abridged, and erased.3

Nearerandneareritcame,thedullcrunchingofwheels,nearerandyetnearer,andnow,
outsidebeforethedooritceased,andIdraggedmyselftothewindowandsawablackplumed
hearse.Thegatebelowopenedandshut,andIcreptshakingtomydoorandboltedit,butIknew
nobolts,nolocks,couldkeepthatcreatureoutwhowascomingfortheYellowSign.AndnowI
heardhimmovingverysoftlyalongthehall.Nowhewasatthedoor,andtheboltsrottedathis
touch.Nowhehadentered.WitheyesstartingfrommyheadIpeeredintothedarkness,butwhen

1 Bierce 03(Ambrose, Can Such Things Be? An inhabitant of Carcosa,

Project Gutenburg, 2003,
https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/canbe10h.htm)

hecameintotheroomIdidnotseehim.ItwasonlywhenIfelthimenvelopemeinhiscoldsoft
graspthatIcriedoutandstruggledwithdeadlyfury,butmyhandswereuselessandhetorethe
onyxclaspfrommycoatandstruckmefullintheface. 2

The Yellow Sign marks a death inevitableAmerican

disavowal of death is a rebellion against the reign of the
King in Yellow
Peterson 07
(Christopher, Kindred specters: death, mourning, and American affinity, Published by the University of
Minnesota Press, pages 3-4)//AD

in the United States, where death

is treated almost as an aberration of life. Indeed, the present study focuses
on American culture precisely because the American disavowal of
death is so vehement. Aris reads the advent of the mortuary business and the practice of embalming in the United
States during the late nineteenth century as a testament to the American denial of mortality. Death could no longer
be either too familiar or common, too frightening or painful: To sell death, one must make it pleasant (69). This
transformation of death into something pleasantin other words, something that is not death is symptomatic of the
modern segregation of the living and the dead. Following Aris, Gary Laderman traces the
According to Aris, the interdiction of mourning is nowhere more vigilant than

emergence of this peculiarly modern interdiction of death specifically to the postbellum era, which bore witness to the birth of the death
industry.4 During the Civil War, a doctor by the name of Thomas Holmes claimed to have embalmed thousands of fallen soldiers. Because
most Civil War battles were fought on Southern land, the practice of embalming allowed for the preservation and repatriation of the bodies of
fallen Union soldiers. Following the wartime emergence of embalming, Abraham Lincoln became the first U.S. president to have his body
embalmed. Lincolns body, as is well known, was paraded before thousands of mourning citizens on a long, cross-country journey from
Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois. As Laderman notes, the parading of Lincolns body ensured that embalmingan unacceptable

The living could now look

at the face of death and not be confronted by the gruesome details
of decomposition and decay (174). As Jessica Mitford observed in her well-known expos of the American
treatment before the warwould change the practice of American deathways (163).

funeral industry, The American Way of Death (1963), the undertaker put[s] on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death . . .
play[s] no part whatsoever. . . . He and his team. . . score an upset victory over death.5 While this study accords with the claim that American
culture disavows mortality, I do not argue for any simple reversal of this interdiction with an aim toward affirming finitude per se. If death is
beyond our experience (as Heidegger among others has observed), if I am ultimately absent from my own death, then strictly speaking
there is nothing for me to recognize or avow. Yet dying is something that I do every day. Indeed, it might be more accurate to say that

American culture disavows dying, understood as a process that extends

from our birth to our biological demise.6 Even with such an amended formulation, however, it is not
entirely clear whether dying can ever be fully affirmed or avowed. That we live as if we were not
going to die, as Zygmunt Bauman observes, is a remarkable achievement, especially
given the ease with which we disavow dying on a daily basis .7 Some degree of
disavowal would seem both unavoidable and necessary for our survival. Any effort to prolong ones life, from simply eating well and exercising

the disavowal of
dying often has violent political and social consequences. Noting the
wartime imperative to limit our casualties, for instance, Bauman remarks that the
price of that limiting is multiplying the dead on the other side of the
battleline (34). Drawing from Freuds claim that, at bottom no one believes in his own death, Bauman argues that death
is socially managed by securing the immortality of the few
through the mortalization of others (35, his emphasis).8 The belief in my selfto taking medications to prevent or treat illness, evidences this disavowal. For Bauman, however,

2 Chambers 11(Robert, The King in Yellow, The Yellow Sign, Project

Gutenburg, December 24, 2011,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8492/8492-h/8492h.htm#THE_YELLOW_SIGN)

presence, which is also always a belief in my immortality, is thus

dialectically conditioned by the nonpresence of others.

To disavow the Yellow Sign, we must export it globally

under the guise of American exceptionalismthe world
becomes Americas right to kill
Peterson 07
(Christopher, Kindred specters: death, mourning, and American affinity, Published by the University of
Minnesota Press, pages 7-8)//AD

That Americanist literary criticism on the subject of mortality remains implicated in the larger
cultural disavowal of dying suggests that we ought to reassess our critical
energies, particularly as these powers are enlisted to address how American
political ideology produces the death of racial and sexual others.
Indeed, I would argue that such criticism remains investeddespite all claims to the
contraryin an American exceptionalist project.13 American
exceptionalism names, in part, a fetishization of novelty and futurity that initially
defined America against an ostensibly decaying and moribund Europe. As David Noble has argued, the
doctrine of exceptionalism excluded America from the human experience of birth, death, and rebirth by figuring Europe in terms of time and
America in terms of timeless space.14 If, as George Berkeley put it, America is times noblest offspring, history gives birth to its final

America thus becomes eternally present

while Europe breeds in her decay.15 If the new world qua new must deny mortality, then
reanimating the excluded from within the terms of a dialectical
reversal renews rather than dismantles the American exceptionalist
project. Challenging the ideology of American exceptionalism is particularly crucial
for a post9/11 politics that aims to resist the transformation of
American exposure to injury and death into a newly reconsolidated
sense of innocence and immortality. As Donald Pease has argued, 9/11 transformed virgin land into
ground zero, effecting an ideological shift from a secured innocent nation
to a wounded, insecure emergency state.16 Drawing from the work of Giorgio Agamben, Pease
describes the emergency state as a nation thatby exempting itself from
its own democratic rules of free speech, due process, and above all,
the rules of warmarks a division between those whom the state
protects from injury and those whom the state is free to injure and
kill with impunity (13). The reduction of the Arab other to that which cannot be killed because it is already dead works to
cover over the wound that ground zero opens up under the surface of virgin land. The emergency state (or what
Agamben calls the state of exception) thus also names a nation that attempts to except itself
from the universal condition of mortality. As Bauman notes, if mortality and transience are the
progeny in order that the latter might escape time altogether.

norm among humans, durability may be attained only as an exception (67, his emphasis).

The paradigmatic example of the immortal nation is in

prohibition of physician assisted suicidethe law
forecloses PAS to regulate subjectivity in a way conducive
to generating an immune society
Hardes 14
(Jennifer, Law, Immunization and the Right to Die: On Legal Fictions and the Governance of Assisted
Dying, A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts University of Alberta)//AD

The thesis, however, also reveals how this logic of legal fictions might seem odd: why would the law not simply allow practices of assisted
dying in order to preserve the immune society per se? It presents a certain paradox: on the one hand the neoliberal rationality might be better
served if it were to allow the subject, framed as a dependent and burden on other immune persons and immune society (i.e. on the
immunization of other subjects, and on the immunization of the totality) to die; after all, these subjects are said to interfere with the operation
of neoliberalism that demands all subjects are individualized and do not impose on the freedom of other individual subjects. On the other hand

neoliberal rationality seems committed to maintaining the unit of the individual and
closing off this individual from the intrusion and interference of
others, so the act of assisted death becomes impossible. I argue that, to date, a neoliberal
the

political rationality has dealt with this problem as best it can by drawing on or creating concepts that allow some forms of assisted death
(passive euthanasia, palliative sedation) only if they can be framed in a way that comports with its logic: these acts are rationalized through
the use of concepts that feed the legal fiction of the immune person. For instance, the law will draw on the concept of inviolability to create the
fiction of the immune person that will license passive euthanasia as an omission and as a form of letting die that comports with the
neoliberal norm of non-interference. Arguably the law has yet to find a way to sustain the fiction of the immune person and immune society
that would allow the acts of assisted death that current appellants have aimed for; this, however, might not be impossible. The intent of the

legal fictions emergent in case law on assisted dying, with a

show how the fictions of
the immune person and immune society that both legal decisions that deny
assisted dying, and legal appeals in favor of assisted dying, (embedded in the same neoliberal
rationality of governance) rely upon and feed an individualistic,
uncompassionate, and closed-off politics. In framing the problem of assisted
dying as a problem of a political ethos that is divisive and closed, I attempt to re-think a
new affirmative politics. To be clear, this affirmative politics, as I shall following Esposito (2008) use the phrase,
thesis is to expose the operation of

particular emphasis on the legal decisions and the arguments put forth from appellants to

is not one that affirms assisted dying per se: it does not support outright a liberal call for a reversal of the current legal decisions in favor of

it aims to reveal the fictions that law generates in

denying the prospect of assisted dying and in doing so seeks to shift
the way we attempt to conceptualize assisted dying. If the following thesis frames the
the right to die. Rather,

problem of assisted dying as a problem of an individualistic and closed-off political ethos, it also frames an affirmative politics as a prospect for
a more communal and open political ethos. Speaking of assisted dying as a prospect for community in the affirmative sense does not mean
imposing another, albeit different, dogmatic politics, this time replacing a neoliberal individualism with a form of communitarianism. Rather, it

opening up the concepts and fictions that sustain our relations

toward one another in fixed and prescriptive ways that are codified
in law; it also means considering what other prospects for assisted
dying might arise if we deconstruct these concepts and try to think
otherwise. Finally, it means being cautious of apparently good liberal
outcomes such as the right to assisted death if these legal changes, were they to appear, remain framed in a closed off, neoliberal
implies

divisive and non-relational logic.

The status quo of PAS is rooted in a fear of encountering

the Yellow King
Burt 98
(Robert, Disorder in the Court: Physician-Assisted Suicide and the Constitution, Yale Law School, Yale Law
School Legal Scholarship Repository, Faculty Scholarship Series, 1-1-1998, Accessed April 27, 2015)//AD

it is thus possible to compile a single attitude-a true

opinion for the Court, as it were-that the controversy about the existence of a constitutional right to physicianassisted suicide was not yet ripe for definitive resolution but must await future developments
From the five concurring opinions in the two cases,

in state legislatures and in repeated, particularized litigation. Although it is possible to refract all of these opinions through this single lens, to
view all of the concurrences as if they reflected the calm rhetoric that Justice Souter displayed, this measured reading would miss something
dissonant that. can be detected in all of these opinions, Souter's included.

There are odd, discordant notes in all

of the Justices' opinions-the incoherence of Stevens' assertion that the statutes were not challenged as applied and
his correspondingly puzzling effort to present his dissent as a concurrence; the blatant factual errors about
legal barriers to pain palliation in O'Connor's opinion, which Breyer virtually acknowledged as he joined with
her; the muffled, cryptic character of Ginsburg's short concurrence "substantially" agreeing with O'Connor, but not enough to join her opinion
or follow her in joining Rehnquist; the misleading designation of Rehnquist's opinion as speaking for a Court majority though O'Connor's fifth

and even Souter's indecipherable directives for

future legislative actions. There was, in short, something disordered about each of the Justices' opinions-and
vote was significantly at odds with the other four;

something equally disordered about the isolation of each of them from one another, about their inability or unwillingness to find a common

approach or vocabulary. This incoherence was demonstrated most graphically by Chief Justice Rehnquist's appendage of his final footnotes
claiming that constitutional issues remained open notwithstanding the patent intent in the text of his opinion to close off every conceivable

contradiction was only the most visible expression of

the central difficulty evident in all of the opinions-that the Justices
could not bring themselves to resolve the issues but , with the signal exception of
Souter, they could not forthrightly admit their irresolution . This reticence may simply
constitutional claim. This

have arisen from the Justices' conception of the conventional imperatives of the judicial role, that judges are supposed to decide controversies

reticence may reflect something more, something about the underlying

character of this controversy. I believe there are especially disturbing
elements in the assisted suicide controversy that substantially
explain the oddities evident in the Justices' conduct. I come to this conclusion, in part,
and decisively so. Or their

by reflecting on the close similarities between the assisted suicide cases and the behavior of the Justices in the death penalty cases beginning
in the 1970s. Especially in the initial death penalty cases, there is an erratic and almost willfully incoherent quality to the Justices' conduct,

is best understood as a response to the emotional impact of

the subject-matter, to the disturbing quality of the confrontation
with death. In the subsequent history of the death penalty jurisprudence, the Justices grapple with this disturbance and come to
which, I believe,

terms with it in ways that offer some suggestive predictions for the future developments in the jurisprudence of assisted suicide.

Thetimehadcome,thepeopleshouldknowthesonofHastur,andthewholeworldbowtothe
blackstarswhichhangintheskyoverCarcosa. 3
NowIamcalm,buttrulythereisnomoretotell:theincidentendswhereitbeganin
darknessandindoubt.
Yes,Iamagainincontrolofmyself:thecaptainofmysoul.Butthatisnotrespite;itis
anotherstageandphaseofexpiation.Mypenance,constantindegree,ismutableinkind:oneof
itsvariantsistranquillity.Afterall,itisonlyalifesentence.ToHellforlifethatisafoolish
penalty:theculpritchoosesthedurationofhispunishment.Todaymytermexpires.
Toeachandall,thepeacethatwasnotmine. 4

The United States should legalize physician-assisted

suicide.
A statutory approach is key
Baron et al 96
3 Chambers 11(Robert, The King in Yellow, The Repairer of
Reputations, Project Gutenburg, December 24, 2011,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8492/8492-h/8492h.htm#THE_REPAIRER_OF_REPUTATIONS)

4 Bierce 03(Ambrose, The Moonlit Road, The Library of America,

Excerpt from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from
Poe to the Pulps (The Library of America, 2009), pages 302311.
Originally appeared in Cosmopolitan (January 1907) and reprinted in
the 1910 edition of the Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce.)

(Charles et al, A Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide, Boston College
Law School Faculty Papers, 12-1-96, Accessed May 6, 2015)//AD

Laws that deprive persons of access to physician-assisted sui-cide have been challenged
recently on constitutional grounds in federal and state courts in several jurisdictions.24 We feel that a preferable way to
establish a right to physician-assisted suicide is to make this option
available to persons through explicit statutory authorization. Even if
laws restricting assisted suicide are struck down, laws or regulations
will be necessary to provide oversight and protection against abuse.25
Our statutory approach permits the careful development of procedures
necessary to limit abuse. A statute also more clearly requires and
establishes the public support that should exist for the practice
before it is made legally available. Commentators have argued that
there is no need for legislation in states where assisted suicide is
not specifically outlawed by statute, because physicians in those
states may legally provide patients with means of suicide or, in any
event, need not fear prosecution for doing so.26 Others have
maintained that to legal-ize physician-assisted suicide would make
suicide "too easy," opening the option to patients whose conditions do not warrant such an extreme measure and risking that it would be urged
on patients who do not want it.27 Some contend that legislation would impose onerous
regulations on the conduct of a procedure that already takes place when, in the judgment of the physician, the situation warrants
it.28 On the contrary, for the following reasons, we believe that society
and the medical profession would be better served by a statute that
expressly permits physician-assisted suicide under certain well-defined circumstances, rather
than by no law at all: First, in states that do not explicitly prohibit any form
of assisted suicide, the law's silence leaves physicians in serious
doubt concerning the legality of providing means of suicide to a patient,29 while in states that
do outlaw assisted suicide, phy-sicians must risk prosecution for a
felony in order to assist in a patient's suicide.3 As a result, patients
who seek means of dying are often denied assistance,3' and success in
finding a physician who will help may be a result of luck more than
of need. Second, physicians who now provide assistance in suicide
may be compelled by fear of prosecution to do so in secret,32 without
the opportunity to discuss the case fully and freely with col-leagues
or other professionals. In contrast, physicians have ac- cess to a variety of professional consultations, often including review by ethics
committees or consultants, in connection with other profoundly serious medical-ethical decisions.33 Third, physicians who now
provide assistance in suicide do so without any form of
accountability, procedures, requirements, or guidelines to assure
that the patient's request for assistance is competent, fully informed,
voluntary, and enduring and that the diagnosis and treatment options have
been confirmed and fully explained to the patient.

These are some regs well defendthey check any DA or

case offense
Baron et al 96
(Charles et al, A Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide, Boston College
Law School Faculty Papers, 12-1-96, Accessed May 6, 2015)//AD

A fully informed request within the meaning of section 3(a)(3)(B) means that the patient
understands the medical options available and their consequences.
Section 4 requires the physician to discuss all medical treatments that
might improve the patient's condition or prognosis that are
practicably available, including treatment for pain, and their benefits and burdens; to offer the
patient the opportunity to consult with social workers about social
services that may improve his or her condition; and to advise the patient of
the options for ending his or her life and their benefits and burdens .
For a request to be fully informed, the patient must understand all of this information and make a reasoned decision to seek suicide. Section
3(a)(3)(B) is intended to ensure active decisionmaking by the patient; passive acquies-cence in the recommendations of others would not

patient's request be
voluntary, meaning that it is made independently, free from coercion
or undue influence. The patient may consider the suggestions and
recommendations of others, including the responsible physician, but the
patient's choice must be his or her own decision." Finally, section 3(a)(3)(D) requires that the patient's request be
enduring. Ideally, the patient will have discussed physician-assisted suicide with a number of individuals on multiple occa-sions. At a
minimum, however, the request must be stated to the responsible physician on
at least two occasions that are at least two weeks apart, without self-contradiction
constitute a fully informed and reasoned decision. Section 3(a)(3)(C) requires that the

during that interval. The two-week period is an attempt to balance the prevention of hasty decisionmaking against the prolonging of
unbearable suf-fering.

And thesesolves patient trust and exploitation

Hull 04
Professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo (Richard, The Case for
Physician-Assisted Suicide, Feb 13, 2004, Council for Secular Humanism, Accessed April 27, 2015,
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hull_23_2.htm)//AD

[Argument being refuted] Medicine would be transformed for the worse if doctors
public would become distrustful,
or if they would stop
striving as soon as it became inconvenient.
could legally help patients end their lives. The

wondering whether physicians were truly committed to saving lives,

Doubtless there are physicians who, by want of training or some psychological or moral defect,
lack the compassionate sensitivity to hear a demand for aid in dying and act on it with reluctance,
only after thorough investigation of the patients situation. Such physicians should not be
empowered to assist patients to die. I would propose that this power be
restricted to physicians whose primary training and profession is in
pain management and palliation: they are best equipped to ensure that reasonable alternatives
to euthanasia and suicide are exhausted. Further, patients appeals for assisted suicide should be scrutinized by the same
institutional ethics committees that already review requests for the suspension of life-sustaining technology as a
protection against patient confusion and relatives greed.

Regs check back DAs and turns

Baron et al 96
(Charles et al, A Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide, Boston College
Law School Faculty Papers, 12-1-96, Accessed May 6, 2015)//AD
The

procedures, conditions, and documentation requirements built into the

ensure p
a
s

model statute are designed to

that
hysi-cian- ssisted uicide is restricted to patients who are truly ter-minally ill or
suffering from intractable and unbearable illnesses, and whose requests are'demonstrably competent, fully informed, voluntary, and enduring.

contain strong
safeguards and precise procedural requirements. Such de-tailed
To govern the practice in accordance with these principles, it is necessary that the statute

requirements will counter a common objection to making physicianassisted suicide legally permissible: the so-called "slippery slope"
argument.42 While it is not possible to guarantee that abuse and unjustified extension of the practice cannot or will not take place, we believe

strong and effective safeguards, together with a clear understanding of

the rationale for the practice and the limits to which it applies, can
reasonably meet concerns about a slippery slope: 4 From the physician's perspective, an
abbreviated approach such as that described above would preserve the physician's auton-omy, would avoid imposing burdensome regulations
on the phy-sician, and would not intrude into the physician-patient relation-ship. It would not, however, adequately protect physicians and
could make them unwilling to provide assistance in suicide even in appropriate situations. Because the conditions under which physicians
could legally assist patients in suicide would be stated so generally, physicians would not know in advance whether a particular case fit those
conditions and what actions they should take to obviate any significant risk of criminal charges. Even if a physician acted on a good-faith belief
that the statutory con-ditions were met, he or she might be vulnerable to legal charges later. This possibility would almost certainly leave
many physi-cians, who might have no principled objection to physician-assisted suicide, reluctant to provide it to any of their patients who
might request it." Thus, not only for the protection of patients, but also for the protection of physicians, we chose to outline specific require-

extensive safeguards
protect the integrity of the medical profession and help ensure
that public trust in that integrity remains warranted.45 If the public is
to ask the medical profession to participate in physician-assisted
suicide, then strong safeguards are a reasonable cost for the public and patients to
ments that, when followed, offer the physician legal protection. Moreover, we concluded that
would both

bear. It would be a mistake, however, to think that procedural safe-guards do not come at a significant cost to the patient and to the physicianpatient relationship. At what will typically be an emo-tionally difficult time for the patient and family, unfamiliar third-party consultants,
evaluators, and witnesses must intrude into the physician-patient relationship. Patients and their families will often quite reasonably view the
procedures as a profound invasive.

Confronting death through the legalization of PAS is a

form of spectral politicsspectrality challenges
ontological relations and corporeality to dismantle the
logic of immortality
Peterson 06
(Chirstopher, The Return of the Body: Judith Butler's Dialectical Corporealism, Discourse, 28.2&3, Spring
& Fall 2006, pp. 153-177 (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press DOI: 10.1353/dis.0.0008)//AD

A return to ontology in Precarious Life is also legible in its tendency to reduce

corporeal vulnerability to the threat of external violence. Certainly
the events of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq serve as
devastating reminders of the bodys mortality. But corporeal
vulnerability does not have its origin in external violence. Corporeal
vulnerability does not commence with our exposure to others. The
bodys finitude, its spectrality, is inherent. As Freud puts it, however, at bottom no one
believes in his [their] own death. . . . Every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.35 The
political stratification that positions the socially alive against the
socially dead thus also describes the unequal distribution of
mortality/immortality more generally.36 If no one believes in his or her
own death, then death always happens to others. As Heidegger observes, the
recognition that one dies spreads the opinion that death, so to speak, strikes the they (234). For Heidegger, however, the futural not yet
that attends the certain but indeterminate possibility of death denies how being is always ahead of itself in its anticipation of death.

while the move from the living body to the precarious body
begins to address the problem of finitude so largely absent from Butlers earlier work, her
tendency to reduce finitude to the problem of external threat and
violence does not awaken to the originary mourning that haunts all
bodies. Avowing mortality and mourning might not only forestall the
violent response to 9/11, but could also challenge the reduction of
Americas internal racial and sexual others to the liminal status of
social death. The construction of the Muslim other as always already
Hence,

dead describes but the most recent version of a long American

tradition that secures the immortality of the majority at the
expense of the mortalization of the nations racial and sexual others.
37 Indeed, the belief that death strikes others is most violently felt in
the domain of racial and sexual politics. What I have been calling the
redoubled ghostliness of racial and sexual minorities describes an
intimate contact with both social and material death. As Karla Holloway observes in
Passed on: African-American Mourning Stories, black Americans are unusually at risk for an
untimely death, from specific forms of racial violence, such as
lynching and capital punishment, to all varieties of disease. 38 Given
the homophobic equation of homosexuality and death that has
characterized the response to the AIDS crisis, sexual minorities also
bear the burden of the death that heterosexist culture denies.
Without diminishing the reality of this heightened proximity to
death, however, we must also recognize that finitudeas a
generalizable condition of existencealways comes before its time .
While some of us are socially dead, we are all specters. If self-presence is always tied
to the belief in ones immortality, then only a theory that dislodges
corporeality from the present can challenge the unacknowledged
belief that death is what happens to others. The ultimate queer actto modify Hollands
assertion with which we beganwould be finally to displace the dialectic of being/non-being, to
resist the racist and heterosexist disavowal of spectrality through
which the abjection of queers both emerges and is sustained .

The law serves as the starting point for broader change

all power relations are contingent and ontic, which means
challenging legal fictions are key
Hardes 14
(Jennifer, Law, Immunization and the Right to Die: On Legal Fictions and the Governance of Assisted
Dying, A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy,
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts University of Alberta)//AD

Drawing attention to the concepts that emerge in legal cases on assisted dying and
how these concepts feed legal fictions to enunciate a neoliberal
ethos allows one to note how the law might operate differently. This thesis
had indicated how legal fictions, as fictions, are not immutable truths; they
are instead reflective of wider power-knowledge relations. Law
operates as a particular discourse and technology in which these
power-knowledge relations are realized. I also noted that one of the earlier scholars on legal
fictions, Bentham, had said that we ought to demystify laws fictions . I have claimed that as a
discourse and political technology, law does not simply create fictions independent of social norms: these are not simply laws fictions, but

they are socio-legal fictions because they feed an ethos that

exists outside of law and that in turn permeates law. I have also argued that law is
not simply a conduit of these socio-legal fictions but has the potential to reshape the fictions
through changes in the operation of law. Given this, I will argue that an affirmative
politics of assisted dying ought to demystify, through law, sociolegal fictions. As a practice of critique the law would consider, as Pavlich (2001) drawing on Foucault (1997) how it might
rather

perpetually seek ways of how not to be governed thus. One might suggest that one ought not blame law for its passivity. Why should one

law is a product of neoliberalism and creates legal fictions

creates a neoliberal ethos through its

expect law to deconstruct social norms? At least at present one might argue that
on the basis of this rationality: it unwittingly (i.e. by effect)

concepts and legal fictions. In short, law is not divorced from the social norms it brings into effect (Golder &
Fitzpatrick, 2009). Despite the current passivity of law, this does not mean
that law cannot take on a more critical role: law might indeed be a
conduit of a political rationality, but law can also become a space for
critique (Golder & Fitzpatrick, 2009). Law, and especially case law that is judge-made and spends time covering various positions on
subject matter from witness statements, so-called experts, and even scholarly work on the topic, can provide a productive space to hold

Were law to be understood as a practice of

social critique it could potentially deconstruct social norms (Golder & Fizpatrick,
discussions about social norms (Valverde, 2003).

2009). This then forms the first part of my affirmative politics: case law must become a practice of critique that plays an active role in
deconstructing the social norms that bring appeals to bear and currently frame legal discussions and decisions. Cases would not make
decisions on the basis of a ratio decidendi but rather would consider appeals within the context of power-knowledge relations. For instance,

the law currently misses the opportunity to

critique social norms. Instead, the chapters have shown how the law reinforces these norms
through concepts and fictions that sustain a neoliberal ethos. This
ethos is one that posits the good society as the reciprocally
dissociative society. By virtue of its method, my thesis has already demonstrated the type of critique that law might take
the various chapters have shown how

on board. The last chapter of this thesis most readily emphasized laws ignorance to social norms that underpin assisted dying cases. I argued
that the principle problem underpinning the question of assisted dying was the neoliberal ethos that perpetuated a social norm of

Because of this social norm, subjects

come to associate any form of dependency as a mode of degeneracy:
being elderly, ill, or disabled is to be degenerate because one is a
dependent and places obligations onto others who, by virtue of the
neoliberal ethos, are encouraged to value a freedom from dependent
relations. My analysis of assisted dying cases revealed that the law did not challenge these
social norms that attached dependency to degeneracy but instead
reinforced them through the creation of legal fictions of the immune
person and immune society. These fictions allowed the law to
reinforce social norms and emphasize how practices of assisted
death would not comport with the norm of reciprocal dissociation . It also
independent, reciprocally dissociative relations between persons.

reinforced these norms when it did not challenge their basic assumptions about what life was worth living and what life was not worth living
but simply confirmed the fact that some lives are dependent and hopeless, while others have the prospect of being independent and
therefore not hopeless.

Our affirmative is the starting point for challenging SQUO

able and patriarchal norms in PAS
Wardlaw 10
(Margaret, The right-to-die exception: How the discourse of individual rights impoverishes bioethical
discussions of disability and what we can do about it, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to
Bioethics, Vol. 3, No. 2, Special Issue: Disability Studies in Feminist Bioethics (Fall 2010), pp. 43-62,
Accessed: 06/05/2015 13:35)//AD

disability-rights critique is a useful one for combating this limited notion of

autonomy because having a disability calls into question the traditional meaning of autonomy. It seems inappropriate for advocates for patient autonomy to
The

fight for improved autonomy for disabled people only when it relates to their ability to die. For a person with a disability, something as simple as being able to live outside

An examination of this critique can help bioethicists

reexamine their definition of autonomy and challenge the
usefulness of a paradigm that privileges autonomy for discussing
disabled or even sick people. In order to expand discussions of disability beyond the traditional debates over euthanasia,
physician-assisted suicide, and the right to refuse care, bioethicists and medical humanists must work
toward a framework that emphasizes context and relationships and
an institution may qualify as a meaningful extension of that persons autonomy.
and medical humanists

takes human interaction into account, does not assume the lone
rights-bearer as the ideal human, and emphasizes the mutual
vulnerability of embodied individuals. Scholarship from feminist
bioethics can be particularly helpful here. Suggesting the
inadequacy of traditional moral philosophy to describe human
interactions has been one of the major projects in feminist bioethics. Each of these three proposals
challenges the legitimacy of rights-based thinking as the basis for
ethical decision making in the context of disability. Attention to context has been an important
component of feminist bioethics for some time. As Susan Sherwin points out, in addition to its usefulness surrounding issues of disability, feminist ethics attention to
context is well suited to many problems in medical ethics where, because of the individualized nature of clinical practice, context is vitally important to ethical reasoning
(Sherwin 1989). A fundamental part of contextualizing all human lives is an attention to the importance of human relationships. Carol Gilligans canonical work outlining an

The ideal of the lone rightsbearer similarly makes possible ethical arguments that seem
outlandish when placed in the context of human relationships. One bioethicists recent book, which compares the moral status of congenitally severely
ethics of care points to the importance of relationships in ethical decision making (Gilligan 1984).

mentally retarded people to that of animals, is an example (McMahan 2002). In her rigorous and moving rebuttal, Kittay points out that, for all his meticulous
argumentation, the author pays little attention to the empirical realities of day-to-day life for those living with profound mental retardation (Kittay 2008, 137). Through her
personal experience as mother to a child with profound mental retardation, Kittay has a profound realization about the relative importance of her childs cognitive
capabilities and her relationship to her daughter, Sesha, as a parent: Sesha would never live a normal life. . . . The worst fear was that her handicap involved her
intellectual faculties. . . . Yet . . . it never even occurred to me to . . . think of her in any other terms than my own beloved child. She was my daughter. I was her mother.
That was fundamental. . . . We didnt yet realize how much she would teach us, but we already knew that we had learned something. That which we believed we valued,
what weIthought was at the center of humanity, the capacity for thought, for reason, was not it, not it at all. (Ibid., 138) Kittays realization that the capacity for reason
was not, as she previously believed at the center of humanity, is rigorously argued in her work, and her empirical descriptions based in her relational experience as a

Because many bioethical arguments privilege rational

decision making above relationships, the leap to limiting moral personhood to
those with the ability to behave rationally seems intuitive. By
contrast, a framework in which respect for the ethical importance of
relationships between people is central does not suppose the
independent lone rights-bearer as a realistic norm or even as an
ideal. Finally, to adequately address issues of disability beyond right-to-die issues, bioethics must take issues of mutual
vulnerability into account. In his book The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank writes, One of our most difficult duties as human
mother are at the heart of her argument

beings is to listen to the voices of those who suffer. . . . These voices bespeak conditions of our own embodiment that most of us would rather forget our own vulnerability

Listening to that suffering with empathy, without objectification, and without turning away is a
fundamental part of the human experience. As Frank sees it, it is a moral imperative that can greatly
to (Frank 1997, 25).

enrich both those who tell and those who listen. He calls for a mutuality of listening, and writes, I hope to show that in listening for the other, we listen for ourselves.

Our aversion to engaging

people with disabilities lies in part in our own desire to deny our
vulnerability. Margrit Shildrick has attributed the desire to deny connection with disabled people
to the threat of an other that would expose our underlying
vulnerability to bodily degeneration (Shildrick 2002, 69). Each of us, in our lives,
will experience illness. Many of us will suffer from chronic disease .
Disengaging from disability can be a way to try and shield ourselves from that reality. But, as Frank so eloquently describes, it is mutual vulnerability that
The moment of witness in the story crystallizes a mutuality of need, when each is for the other (ibid., 25).

makes the act of witnessing so powerful and so important for both listener and teller.